Company employees use common Information Technology (I/T) computer resources such as e-mail, instant messaging and e-meetings to perform job functions. When these computer resources become unavailable, either from planned outages or from unplanned outages, employees unknowingly spend time attempting to access the computer resources during the outages.
A service desk provides a mechanism for a user to enter a service request when the user experiences a computer resource issue, such as not being able to access a particular application. Service desks typically employ an issue tracking system to create, update, and resolve reported customer issues. The issue tracking system often includes a knowledge base that includes resolutions to common problems. Businesses have moved towards “self-service” web-based service desks, which allow a user to view known issues in a computer environment and enter service requests if needed when a user experiences computer resource issues. Service desks, however, may overwhelm a user with outage notifications corresponding to computer resources unrelated to the user's work environment. For example, an engineer may be notified of a finance server outage that the engineer does not have a requirement, or permission, to access.